So you've just completed a Doctor Who marathon and want to roleplay as him in ToME. Or maybe you just want to unlock Paradox Mage. Either way, welcome to one of the game's trickiest, but also most powerful and fun-to-play classes.

The key to playing a TW is focus. They have a lot of great skills, but they can't be good at all of them – especially not early on. This guide is by no means the only way to make a good TW, but it is the strongest approach of the several I've tried. I've won the game with it, beat Atamathon, and (in a separate game) gone past level 100 of the ID.

This build focuses on bow skills for early damage and crowd control, later branching out into magic skills because they're awesome.

Race

There are two kinds of races for a TW: Shalore and everything else. Shaloren are unequivocally the best in the long run – the synergy between Timeless and Invigorate is incredible, especially in the ID – but they have a somewhat rocky start and are hecka cheesy. If you don't like Shaloren, pretty much any other race makes at least a decent TW. Skeleton is probably the most durable.

That said, just go with Shalore.

Stats

Focus on Dex early on – it's your damage stat and is also needed to make your stuns stick. Then raise Con until you can 5/5 Thick Skin (using items, of course). Then max out Magic. Then, and only then, can you afford to dump the rest of your points into Willpower. (You can add a point or two into Wil earlier on if you're really close to the requirements for a key skill, but be disciplined! It's surprisingly easy to get carried away and gimp either your damage or your survivability.)

Class Points

Dual Techniques: Invest two points into this tree early on to get the benefit of Flurry, which is a great way to deal with troublesome bosses and rares. I like to cheese it and take the points out later. In the long run, you are going to have a staff in your offslot – but not until level 20-30 or so.

Archery – Bows: Five points in the first skill as soon as you can, and one in the second. Sometime in your teens, you should start investing in Volley of Arrows, although it doesn't need to be maxed.

Archery Prowess: 1/1/1/5 fairly early, because Scatter Shot is a great way of disabling crowds. I usually put either my my second category point into this, reserving the first for an inscription slot. The other skills in this tree are quite good as well, but you have better.

Spacetime Folding: This one is tricky. The skills are all very strong, but require a heavy investment in Willpower (for prereqs) and Magic (because they scale with spellpower), so you need to be cautious at the start. Put points into Weapon Folding as your Wil-boosting items allow, since you will be desperate for damage early on. Swap is decent, since it's your only source of confusion, but skippable – it gets not one but two save checks, can drop you in a difficult situation, and can't be used in vaults. Displace Damage is probably the best defensive buff in the game, but you shouldn't rush Willpower to get it, since that will hurt your Dex/Con focus. Instead, put points into it as items allow – you will probably have it maxed by your early 20s anyway. Finally, Temporal Wake is one of the best spells in the game, but early on you won't have the spellpower to make it hurt, the Spacetime Mastery points to reduce the cooldown, or the paradox to be able to spam it. Max it, but not until level 40 or so.

Speed Control: Scales with Magic and tends not to mesh very well with your other skills. Slow is amazing when it works, but it's hard to get it to stick on tough enemies until very late, and easy to find yourself wanting to teleport into it. Haste is great, and you should max it if you're a Shalore, but not until your 30s or so.

Temporal Combat: Another amazing but tricky-to-manage tree. You probably won't have the points to spare for Strength of Purpose, although it's a very good skill. The same goes for Quantum Feed. Invigorate should be maxed by mid-game, but it doesn't make a huge difference early on, although you should invest at least one point as early as you can for the stamina regen. Damage Smearing is amazing (among other things, it means that you get the benefit from Displace Damage twice), but it takes a while to be in position to leverage it; you'll need temporal resist items and maybe a wand with temporal wards. Even early, though, it's worth a point for “oh crap I am definitely going to die the next turn” situations. Beware: enemies with large amounts of +damage to all (Atamathon, basically) will get that bonus damage twice when you have Damage Smearing up. This cost me two lives until I figured out what was going on. Note that the Damage Smearing buff (as well as the Smeared effect) is marked as Other, not Magical; it doesn't benefit from Timeless, but it also can't be removed by Dispel Magic and the like.

Time Travel: This is not a popular choice, going by the vault, which is odd because it is amazing. My last cat point usually goes to unlock this. Static History is mandatory if you didn't decide to pick up Hidden Resources ( for which see below), but, even without that, Echoes from the Past makes the tree worthwhile. It doesn't get good until very late in the game, when monsters start to have massive amounts of hitpoints; but, when it does, you can easily start to rack up Corrupter-style damage numbers, especially in the ID. And it benefits from your temporal damage bonus!

Generics

In the main game, this will obviously be heavily influenced by what escorts you happen to get. (The Healing Light tree is as great for wardens as it is for every other magic-based character.) Ruined Earth (from the Last Hope Cemetery) is great if you picked up Draconic Will, since it will cripple surrounding characters but not you. Other than that, build order is mostly common sense. You want Accuracy and Thick Skin as early as you can get them, and Spacetime Mastery as soon as you can afford it (i.e. as soon as you have enough Willpower-boosting items). Chronomancy is not worth a heavy investment of points. Max Timeless as soon as you can, assuming you're a Shalore, which you should be. Finally, for the ID, I like to take the Cunning/Survival tree for Charms Mastery and Evasion.

Prodigies

Draconic Will is virtually mandatory – with Timeless and Invigorate, it basically makes you immune to all negative effects. Have it set to autocast when enemies are sighted. Hidden Resources (easily obtainable via a heroism infusion) will solve all your paradox problems forever. In SVN, Temporal Form has been boosted enough to be worth considering, and will increase your damage considerably, but I still think that Hidden Resources is a little better for those long-drawn-out slugfests. (I picked up Temporal Form in my current game, and am considering using the console to swap it with HR, but feel like this might be cheating. Leveling yet another TW to the same level with different prodigies would, however, be hecka boring. Thoughts?)

And in conclusion...

Here's the dump from my current SVN ID Warden (separate post due to size):

'Bringer of Doom' was achieved for Killed a Bringer of Doom. At 2013-01-09 22:33:58'Dragon's Greed' was achieved for Amassed 8000 gold pieces. At 2013-01-12 01:27:39'Earth Master' was achieved for Killed Harkor'Zun and unlocked Stone magic. At 2013-01-12 19:54:13'Exterminator' was achieved for Killed 1000 creatures. At 2013-01-09 22:28:59'Fear me not!' was achieved for Survived the Fearscape! At 2013-01-13 22:18:33'Infinite x10' was achieved for Got to level 10 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-09 21:51:13'Infinite x100' was achieved for Got to level 100 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-16 18:55:03'Infinite x20' was achieved for Got to level 20 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-09 23:55:09'Infinite x30' was achieved for Got to level 30 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-10 02:09:25'Infinite x40' was achieved for Got to level 40 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-11 02:49:34'Infinite x50' was achieved for Got to level 50 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-12 01:51:45'Infinite x60' was achieved for Got to level 60 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-12 19:58:09'Infinite x70' was achieved for Got to level 70 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-13 00:58:28'Infinite x80' was achieved for Got to level 80 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-14 08:47:48'Infinite x90' was achieved for Got to level 90 of the infinite dungeon. At 2013-01-14 19:13:19'Level 10' was achieved for Got a character to level 10. At 2013-01-09 20:12:31'Level 20' was achieved for Got a character to level 20. At 2013-01-09 22:42:14'Level 30' was achieved for Got a character to level 30. At 2013-01-10 01:12:34'Level 40' was achieved for Got a character to level 40. At 2013-01-11 03:01:14'Level 50' was achieved for Got a character to level 50. At 2013-01-12 16:32:59'Pest Control' was achieved for Killed 1000 reproducing vermin. At 2013-01-12 22:33:34'Shasshhiy'Kaish' was achieved for Killed Shasshhiy'Kaish after letting her grow as powerful as possible. At 2013-01-12 15:51:43'Size is everything' was achieved for Did over 1500 damage in one attack. At 2013-01-12 16:19:26'Size matters' was achieved for Did over 600 damage in one attack. At 2013-01-11 02:31:54'The bigger the better!' was achieved for Did over 3000 damage in one attack. At 2013-01-16 17:46:36'Treasure Hoarder' was achieved for Amassed 3000 gold pieces. At 2013-01-10 02:02:56'Treasure Hunter' was achieved for Amassed 1000 gold pieces. At 2013-01-09 22:34:59

When inscribed on your body:Effective talent level: 0.0Use mode: ActivatedRange: melee/personalCooldown: 23Travel Speed: instantaneousUsage Speed: instantIs: a nature giftDescription: Activate the infusion to increase three of your primary stats by 7 for 10 turns.Also while Heroism is active, you will only die when reaching -639 life. However, when below 0 you cannot see how much life you have left, and you will die if you did not heal before the effect ends.It will always increase your three highest stats.It can be used to inscribe your skin with the infusion.. Dropped by Aluin the Fallen ) titan's heroism infusion (+13 for 12 turns, die at -802) Type: scroll / infusion ; tier 3

When inscribed on your body:Effective talent level: 0.0Use mode: ActivatedRange: melee/personalCooldown: 20Travel Speed: instantaneousUsage Speed: instantIs: a nature giftDescription: Activate the infusion to increase three of your primary stats by 13 for 12 turns.Also while Heroism is active, you will only die when reaching -802 life. However, when below 0 you cannot see how much life you have left, and you will die if you did not heal before the effect ends.It will always increase your three highest stats.Its effects scale with your Constitution stat.It can be used to inscribe your skin with the infusion.. Dropped by Harkor'Zun ) wild infusion (resist 11%; cure physical) Type: scroll / infusion ; tier 1

When inscribed on your body:Effective talent level: 0.0Use mode: ActivatedRange: melee/personalCooldown: 30Travel Speed: instantaneousUsage Speed: instantIs: a nature giftDescription: Activate the infusion to increase three of your primary stats by 23 for 9 turns.Also while Heroism is active, you will only die when reaching -732 life. However, when below 0 you cannot see how much life you have left, and you will die if you did not heal before the effect ends.It will always increase your three highest stats.Its effects scale with your Magic stat.It can be used to inscribe your skin with the infusion.. Dropped by elder vampire ) wizard's movement infusion (922% speed; 4 turns) Type: scroll / infusion ; tier 3

When inscribed on your body:Effective talent level: 0.0Use mode: ActivatedRange: melee/personalCooldown: 16Travel Speed: instantaneousUsage Speed: instantIs: a nature giftDescription: Activate the infusion to increase movement speed by 922% for 1 game turn.Any actions other than movement will cancel the effect.Also prevent stuns, dazes and pinning effects for 4 turns.Note: since you will be moving very fast, game turns will pass very slowly.Its effects scale with your Magic stat.It can be used to inscribe your skin with the infusion.. ) controlled phase door rune (range 9) Type: scroll / rune ; tier 4

When inscribed on your body:Effective talent level: 0.0Use mode: ActivatedRange: melee/personalCooldown: 20Travel Speed: instantaneousUsage Speed: 1 turnIs: a spellDescription: Activate the rune to become invisible (power 17) for 12 turns.As you become invisible you fade out of phase with reality, all your damage is reduced by 40% and you cannot heal or regen life while invisible.

You switch to staff whenever you need to cast anything, and switch back to bow whenever you need to shoot something. Celerity makes weapon set swapping instant, so you've got no reason but the effort not to. The primary bonus is the spellpower boost (late game staves get somewhat obscene, even with the diminished returned) and likely a strong +temporal component.

Late game staff damage is actually pretty decent, though, especially if you've got your magic up there. A dex/con/mag with remainder into will isn't going to be too impressive on that front (though still higher than most things, likely), but a dex/mag/will with maxed quantum feed will be. Late game staff warden can melee for a good chunk of damage, and if they manage to pick up channel staff (or at least staff mastery, but channel is generally universally better than anything a bump attack can do) and invest in it, well. Sexy things.

Celerity is certainly a good talent, but I find that there is really no point of the game where TWs are best served by focusing on even mobility at the expense of the two things they need most: durability and damage. YMMV, of course, and I had enough class points late in the game that I could probably have afforded to max Celerity if I had really wanted too; but I can say with confidence that I never missed it.

As for Dex/Will/Mag, that was the original plan for the character, and I had some success with TWs built according to those lines. I found, however, that focusing on constitution early on made an enormous difference in survivability to a class that doesn't start with much of it (especially in the ID, and especially if you open vaults).

My basic strategy towards the end of the game was to activate Haste, Damage Smearing and an object with Blinding Speed as soon as I saw an enemy to get 230+% global speed, drop Slow and possibly Stop (w/ Meteoric Crash), then hammer with Epoch and archery skills. I ended up with 80% temp resist, and through the TARDIS I had a second source of Damage Smearing. For long/difficult battles I used Invigorate directly after Haste and Damage Smearing so I could keep Damage Smearing up almost the whole time. I very rarely went below 80% life. In my offhand I used the Thaloren Longbow (range 10) and a set of arrows with +200% speed so I could send a Pinning, Vital or Scatter Shot to start things off. Despite having invested fairly heavily in the Spacetime Weaving tree, I didn't ever actually use Banish or Wormhole. Spacetime Mastery was nice though for using the Rune of the Rift, which by the end of the game was doing 800+ damage and having no problem sending even the final bosses away for a few turns of rest. I also took the Harmony tree, which I used mostly for Elemental Harmony, though having one point in Healing Nexus and Waters of Life can be quite helpful. I guess I could have been cheesy with Elemental Harmony to boost my global speed even higher, but it wasn't necessary and would feel a bit like cheating. Still, it was nice when a pyromage led off the assault for the opposition...

All in all he felt pretty indestructible, but I ended up sacrificing him for the Way at the end of the game, because I really need to study for my upcoming exams. Although I probably should have put a few of the massive randarts (check out the rings and amulet) in my vault before taking that road. Oh well.

Is there a trick to survive the first ~10 levels in the infinite dungeon? I seem to have no heal, no escape, little health and low damage. I die to pretty much anything in the first vault I open. Should I just skip vaults until later? Or retry until I get a really lucky start?

Use precognition before you open a vault (note that this isn't flawless, I've had fire imps not show themselves in precog, only to blink out and outrange me when I did it for real.) Rely on your starting bow and dimensional step.

Wow, i totally overlooked precognition. So far it has helped me a lot. Two questions about it:1) Asuming I do the exact same things both times, do random events (like exact damage numbers or saving throws) play out in the same way during and after using precognition?2) During the 'unfolding space-time' message after precog runs out I have to wait for 15-20 seconds. Is that normal? Any way to accelerate the reloading process?

I don't use Precognition a whole lot. It does help to find out what kind of vault it is, though (some are much more dangerous than others).

In general, as a Shalore TW, I would avoid the vast majority of vaults until you hit character level 10 at least. Having a teleport rune makes vaults way more survivable, so use the first one you find.

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